Beyond the Break

by Kristen Mae

  My arms were around his neck, quivering against his sweat-dampened skin. “I know.”

  He buried his face in my hair. “Please don’t give up on us.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  We lay joined together for a long time, grasping onto one another, the air between us growing sweet with our covenant.

  For weeks after, Oren pushed me to tell him every lurid detail of my affair with Claire. Sometimes I cried, sometimes he cried, and one time I picked up the bedside lamp and smashed it onto the floor (we buried the pieces in the backyard in the middle of the night like a couple of lunatics); but every time, we ended up limp and wasted in each other’s arms.

  One night, I cried afterward, couldn’t stop crying, and I clutched at him and clawed and wrapped my arms and legs around him desperately like I couldn’t pull him close enough. He sighed and squeezed me as tight as he could while my body shook with sobs.

  “Why am I crying so hard?” I said through my tears.

  “Because you finally let yourself be vulnerable.” That made me cry even harder, and he shut me up by making love to me and pulling my hair while he did it.

  In February, on a bad day—a day I’d let my thoughts run away with Claire, a day I couldn’t stop pacing, trying to escape her scent—Oren asked me if I ever regretted all that had happened with her. I told him I didn’t regret a thing. Not one minute of it. I said it nice and ugly so he’d get jealous and fuck me on the kitchen counter.

  Afterward, as I lay staring up into the ceiling lights, spent and still throbbing and trying to catch my breath, I thought, Well that worked pretty well. But then I realized that Oren had planned for it to happen that way. Claire had become an unwitting tool in the healing of my marriage.

  In the healing of me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I didn’t even write this damn book, I swear. I vomited a tsunami of words and my writer friends sorted through the wreckage and organized the chaos until eventually, an intelligible thing emerged.

  Meghan O’Flynn, thank you for your dicky editing (you awful, awful woman), and for your friendship, which is everything to me. Mary Widdicks, thank you for your insights and for always talking me off the ledge—sometimes literally. (I will never, ever piss you off. Wink wink.) Christina Frey of Page Two Editing, I can’t even with you and your mad editing skillz. I’ll have the next book to you as soon as I can. Michelle Fairbanks of Fresh Design ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS COVER. Jocelyn Pihlaja, thanks to you, I finally understand subordinating conjunctions. I wish you lived nearby, because Mojitos. Beth Teliho, you fixed some of my characters and made me delete boring shit. #gratitude. Lana Pattinson, you taught me how important it is to be a picky self-editor. Tamra Parker, thank you so much for your honest feedback. Kassie Nucci, my sister, my audience. Thank you for believing in me. Katrina Rozmus, my sister from another mother. You believe in me like we share DNA. Mom, all the good in me comes from you.

  Huge thanks to Sarah Cottrell, Christine Burke, Lynn Morrison, Amanda Mushro, Dr. Samantha Rodman, Anna-May Jeffreys, Elizabeth Olsen, Stacia Ellermeier, Chrissy Howe, Anne Radcliffe, Stephanie Jankowski, Ashley Allen, Kathryn Leehane, Christine Organ, Ashley Fuchs, Allison Tate, and all those in the freelance world who cheered me on along the way. This is some good-ass tribal shit, man.

  To my husband: Thank you for loving me anyway.

  To my children: YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO READ THIS BOOK UNTIL YOU’RE 21.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kristen Mae lives on the Atlantic coast of Florida with her husband, two children, and a fuzzy, giant-eared little dog named Gizmo. She is a classically trained violist, an avid runner and yogi, an artist, and a sexual abuse survivor. Yes, she used all that shit to help create Hazel Duval. According to her doctor, she needs to ease up on the caffeine.

  For more from Kristen Mae, sign up for her newsletter at

  http://www.kristenmaebooks.com

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  And no, she won’t spam you. Only assholes spam people. But hell yes, she is totally writing more books. Hold your fucking horses.